News

Fire Ants Looking Forward to SICHLXX

by Brother Lee Love | October 30, 2017, 12:04 PM ET

Coming off their second Continental Cup victory and an enjoyable but fairly unproductive draft, the Fire Ants were once again a team without a clear sense of direction. Lacking depth at forward and losing most of their defensive corps to free agency, it looked like it might finally be time for the Ants to rebuild. Like last season, however, the assets they had to sell off were few and drawing little interest from other GMs.

Trapped between mediocrity and madness, GM Norm Donovan once again chose madness. Donovan, normally quite miserly during free agency, unleashed hell upon his bank account. $4M for Antoine Vermette? Easy. $7.5M for Travis Zajac? No problem. $12M for Duncan Keith? A pittance! When the dust had settled, the Ants had shelled out almost $14M in signing bonuses and their payroll had ballooned to well over $80M. They had brought in a mercenary crew on defence – most signed to expensive one year contracts – to fill the top 5 spots. Pricey contracts were given to depth forwards to round out their bottom six.

“I warned the GMs last year that if they don’t trade with me when I’m trying to rebuild, it just forces me to compete,” said Donovan, “You would have thought they’d have learned that lesson by now. If one of these brainless dopes had given me a first and second round pick for Okposo and Kulikov at the draft, I would have sat out most of free agency and slunk quietly into the fringes of playoff contention.”

Although the defence has suffered from some obvious confusion as they tried to gel as a unit, the Ants did reasonably well in the pre-season. Tuukka Rask in particular was in top form, which hopefully will carry into the regular season. Despite a number of teams beefing up their teams, the Ants remain one of the top contenders in the World Conference – on paper at least.

Projected Forwards:

Pavelski – Stamkos – Okposo

Marchessault – Zajac – Hoffman

Zucker – Cullen – Kulemin

Flynn – Vermette – Lewis

Projected Defence:

Keith – Hainsey

Green – Gorges

Garrison – Tanev

Kulikov

Projected Goalies:

Rask – Kaskisuo

Rumours abound that one of the defencemen – likely Garrison – are being shopped for a depth forward or backup goaltender. Playoff hero Andrew “Al” Hammond has been inexplicably relegated to the minor leagues, but Donovan is said to be wary of relying on the untested Kasimir Kaskisuo in the event of an injury to Tuukka Rask.